What is the difference between an ecological pyramid and an energy pyramid?
An energy pyramid provides a means of describing the feeding and energy relationships within a food chain or web. Each step of an energy pyramid shows that some energy is stored in newly made structures of the organism which eats the preceding one. The pyramid also shows that much of the energy is lost when one organism in a food chain eats another. Most of this energy which is lost goes into the environment as heat energy. While a continuous input of energy from sunlight keeps the process going, the height of energy pyramids (and therefore the length of food chains) is limited by this loss of energy. (see reference and example here) http://regentsprep.org/Regents/biology/units/ecology/energy.cfm An Ecological Pyramid (or Trophic pyramid) is a graphical representation designed to show the biomass or productivity at each trophic level in a given ecosystem. Biomass pyramids show the abundance or biomass of organisms at each trophic level, while productivity pyramids show the production o
